


This is not a Rose, I am not your Echo

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Awesome Ladies Ficathon, Community: where_no_woman, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the <a href="http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html">Awesome Ladies Ficathon</a> prompt: <i>Star Trek XI, Winona Kirk; she refuses to be Mrs Dead George Kirk anymore</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	This is not a Rose, I am not your Echo

Winona has gone back to using her maiden name. Not because it's _easier_ (it isn't, and the paperwork even in this day and age is shocking and she lives with the constant feeling she's missed one crucial change somewhere) but because she's tired of the way people's mouths linger over the name "Kirk," like somehow they can taste heroism and valor in the consonants (and she wonders if total strangers who share the surname get asked if they're any relation because people are damn nosy like that).

They'd talked about George taking her name. She can't remember now why they changed their minds.

George was a good man, and they'd made a good marriage, and in the end he did what he had to do, and although she still hurts from his decision in that raw way that never really heals but becomes part of the background noise of life, she is far more than the sum of her relationship with George and the children she bore him. To remind herself, one afternoon when Jim's just barely three and he and Sam are playing quietly together on the sunlit floor, she begins hand-drafting a warp-core schematic. In stolen moments over the next two years, she makes several improvements to dilithium and coolant flow and sends them to Starfleet.

When they're old enough to have an opinion, she asks Sam and Jim about the name; both of them want to remain Kirks. Their call, though her brother Frank (who is a pain in her ass at the best of times) thinks her boys are being ridiculous and _oh_ she wants to give him a piece of her mind but he's the only good option she's got as far as seeing they get taken care of when she's off-planet (and god damn it if he's only barely better than their mother but George's parents are absolutely out of the question because she doesn't want _her_ boys growing up with _their_ guilt. She's worried enough about how Jim's going to grow as it is because he might look like George but he's _her_ son down to his marrow: stubborn minded and already smarting because the world isn't fair, just damn round).

When her plans are received, she gets a note from brass; they want her to come to the Academy, to teach, but she's not tearing her boys away from Iowa and she's sure as hell not going to let them have "Lieutenant Commander Kirk" on tap in San Francisco, to draw in the wide-eyed recruits and trot out in dress uniform at every formal function. She sends a message back -- she wants in on the building of the _Enterprise_, and _yes_, she tells them, she knows that means going back out into space at some point. She knows a lot better than they do that the warp cores will have to be built in Spacedock and not on Earth.

Things are never going to go back to what they were and she's not asking them to. But she was _never_ just "Mrs. George Kirk" even when he was alive. She'd had brilliance, ambitions, plans of her own before the good guy she'd never anticipated fell into her life, and he'd always laughed that his most important husbandly duty (that she would publicly let him admit to) was never getting in her way.

On the day they welcome her to the ground crew of the _Enterprise_, she gets a reprimand for insubordination for reminding a visiting Admiral that _she_ ranked _George_ before his goddamned Day of Destiny, and maybe she wasn't as diplomatic about it as she might have been, but despite everything she has endured, her guiding philosophy is still Let's Get On With It. So she does.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html?thread=4402325#t4402325) at LiveJournal; polished and posted to [where_no_woman](http://community.livejournal.com/where_no_woman/129357.html)


End file.
